of the covert pandemic and the impact that that's had on the travel industry so this is the 1st flight is not necessarily the most busy one however there are people there now who have been queuing up to board on it obviously health precautions safety measures are being put in place each one of the passengers needs to present a covert p.c.r. test they will be quarantined when they arrive in saudi arabia but for now it is a historic moment in so far as that this is a tangible example of what the countries have been able to achieve following that reconciliation. this is al jazeera and these are the headlines the u.s. house majority leader says there could be a vote on whether to stay. president donald trump on a scale of impeachment has been introduced in the snow last couple of hours it charges strong with inciting supporters to stage an attack on capitol hill last

week meanwhile a resolution calling on vice president mike pence soon folks the 25th amendment to the constitution was books by a republican representative joe castro has more now from capitol hill. this is sort of the double barrel approach that democrats are using to try to hold president trump accountable for the mob violence that we saw here a week ago this article of impeachment it was introduced on the house floor done without announcement and the article itself is simple it's one charge it charges trump with inciting violence against the u.s. government it cites the speech that he gave that morning to his supporters to rally them to march of the u.s. capitol to try to overturn the election result another effort of democrats which is expected to fail it is a nonbinding resolution trying to pressure the vice president mike pence to invoke

the 25th amendment to remove president trump from office. the u.s. is preparing to designate yemen sooty movements as a terror group a group sworn the blacklisting will hurt the deliveries search and rescue teams in indonesia are working to recover the black boxes from the passenger plane crashed on saturday the 62 people on board the devices are expected to shed light on the reasons behind the sudden plunge into the sea. and the u.k.'s health secretary says the pandemic is at the worst point more than 30000 people are currently in hospital with covert 19 the government is speeding up vaccine delivery to offer vaccinations to around 50000000 people by mid february and that's your state's stay with us an al-jazeera inside story is next.

torture enforced disappearances the lack of human rights the story of guantanamo bay more than 10 years ago one man promised the detention center would close so incoming u.s. president joe biden is now under more pressure than ever to stick to his pledge that will keep this is inside story. of the program i'm now it's been 19 years since the u.s. open the military detention center at guantanamo bay it quickly became notorious for human rights abuses and the fact the u.s.

administration didn't consider its detainees were entitled to any protection from international laws now amnesty international is edging the incoming u.s. president joe biden to fulfill a promise he made a decade ago to close it down there are still 40 people being held there with no access to a fair trial amnesty $62.00 page report says the tensions that go on ton of money are inescapably bound up with years of unlawful government misconduct and that there is a continuing lack of accountability for that it provides details of the secret transfers interrogations forced feeding of hunger strikers torture in forced disappearances and a complete lack of jew process for the prisoners there amnesty says when biden was vice president under barack obama the administration did vow to close the facility but failed to do. during 8 years in office let's take a closer look now at how it all started at guantanamo and where things are now as

of today well the u.s. sent the 1st 20 detainees there after the events of 911 attacks in 2001 as part of what the then bush administration called its war on terror they weren't considered criminals or prisoners of war and so were not subject to international human rights law in 2006 top al qaeda members arrived including the architect of those attacks on america khalid shaikh mohammed they were interrogated using techniques such as waterboarding which is widely condemned as torture 3 years later in 2009 president barack obama took office vowing to close the facility within one year fast forward to 2013 it was still open dozens of inmates went to hunger strike in protest mr obama ended his 2 terms in office describing go to guantanamo as a facility that should have never been opened in the 1st place his successor donald trumps that the people there were terrorists and ordered that it should be kept

open. ok for more on this joining us on the program today in washington d.c. we have a human rights council at the guantanamo bay military commissions she also conducted an investigation into the cia's extraordinary rendition program from london we have simon crowther he's a legal advisor for amnesty international he commissioned the report we're talking about and in new york we have karen greenberg director of the center on national security at fordham university school of law karen also wrote the least worst place guantanamo's 1st 100 days welcome to you all in washington coming to you 1st do you think joe biden will shut it down that is certainly the hope and hope springs eternal. i think that president biden even without congress had. a good road map for how to go about doing this we have detainee counsel and association with

a number of n.g.o.s here on the ground including on this international have come up with a series of recommendations for how he can do so including reopening or recreating the state department's positions that closure of guantanamo and starting to negotiate and actually transfer men out who have all been cleared for years so i think that he has a good roadmap for doing so and certainly now that he has congress his options are wider karen greenberg in new york joe biden said 1011 years ago we will close it down barack obama said he would shut it down within the 1st 2 years of his 1st term it's still there what's gone wrong. well actually president obama said he would close it within one year and what went wrong was he disappeared the political backlash that he would have by delaying the decisions about how to actually close it down so now joe biden and president biden will have learned from this we hope and can begin to do this quickly and efficiently and just one tag on to what was

just said i think the special envoy for closing guantanamo office does need to be reopened immediately but it needs to be stamped in a much more robust way it's complicating the negotiations that need to go on and and that's a 1st important step simon crowther in london you commissioned this report simon it's not the 1st report of its kind that we've had in the past 1516 years or so do you get as a pushback anything more than just platitudes when politicians perhaps presidents or prime ministers in the countries where people have been taken to from guantanamo do you get anything more than platitudes from them we're recalling for the closure of guantanamo bay because it is such a significant and ongoing human rights violation. if those who are currently detained now can suggest a torture they've been subjected to enforce disappearance and none have been brought fadi to try it in terms of the reactions that we receive where.

internationally is not involved in arranging for the transfers of detainees out of content and i but our understanding is that there are some states that are willing to take. the take there perhaps not all of them at the moment but we're optimistic as already said out of that hope today joe biden will be able to bring this issue forward and to arrange for the transfer of all of those within can tell you about out of the detention pace now we make to cause that one court has already set is for all those speeds to be transferred out and the 2nd call is where there is sufficient evidence and. this is admissible evidence that is evidence that hasn't been gained through torture then and only if such evidence exists some may then face a fair trial in federal court but i stress only if such disparate evidence exists and we are i have to say state doubt for it it does. in washington why did the the

flow of people being transferred out of guantanamo sort of stumble to being at a standstill was that a deliberate decision on the part of somebody at the base or was it a decision perhaps taken in washington well you know do you even during the obama administration there were nasty frustrations at the pace of which men were being cleared for release and then transferred primarily because obama gave free rein to the justice department and the department of defense to contest the heaviest applications of those who could be transferred and so what you saw is at the end of the obama administration there's this rush realizing that trump is going to come in and probably stop the transfers there's this rush to transfer as many people as you can to was the end of 2016 but unfortunately they couldn't get as many out as they would have liked and so you have men who are cleared for release under obama basically facing at least another 4 years of being there now during the trumpet

ministration as promised really no one's been trying to transfer it except for one individual who's transfer was negotiated prior with saudi arabia of course is an ally of soft united states and particularly troubling. but that has been negotiated trier to truck coming into office you saw no other transfers during the destruction and that was 5 design i mean no one in this administration was interested in certainly human rights issues 6 month timetable but they just they weren't interested in putting the resources into to go shoot those transfers and of course they have a fundamental misunderstanding. well national security means strange and so. so yes of course it's slow to 2 it didn't slow it stopped completely and we're hoping that it'll now restart if i may just briefly add on to something that simon just said regarding the possibility of there trials are i represent one of the

defendants in the 911 case and i can tell you the government has admitted that there are probably the their primary evidence in this case are statements made by these men in 2007 after they were brought to guantanamo and we are in the middle of suppression hearings on that evidence of to suppress that evidence and what we what we have so far from witnesses is that basically shows that that evidence is entirely the product of torture would be fair to say karen i mean the people who criticized one ton of abate they basically say it is in effect a concentration camp it is the application of legal and physical power applied to a place that has kind of outgrown its original purpose and that's highlighted surely by the fact that we've now got these tribunals taking place in guantanamo which couldn't arguably take place anyplace else because if they took place someplace else they'd have to be legally constituted in

a completely different way right so those are 2 different things i mean i think that you know one time it was a problem outside the law from the very day it opened so i wouldn't say that it's out going to its purpose its purpose was always contrary to united states military and international law and you know originally they said it was for military commissions that really hasn't happened in any fair or even productive way since the very beginning so that one thing i think the question of his trial and what would happen with them could they be returned and eric holder had one. attorney general eric holder and obama have wanted to federal court is if not i don't think it is complicated but i would defer to openness as everybody says but i think there are some issues that are on the table one is the death penalty is there a possibility the death penalty could be taken off the table in preparation for some kind of plea deal we had the united states federal court civilian courts have

try one detainee from guantanamo. for the lethal bombings. in tanzania and kenya and so and torture was involved all the bakkies both in terms of evidence that the prosecution wanted to bring and couldn't bring in terms of the individual on trial himself so there is some precedent for being able to have these trials there's no guarantee how they would turn out richard there and so this would be a viable solution of going forward but remember we can't do these trials in the united states as currently decreed by law because no detainee can be brought to the united states for any reason whatsoever ok so that's the point ok simon in london is there any evidence at all over the past 15 years plus that these enhanced techniques have stopped or for oil a potential attack on america the united states or american interests around the

world. absolutely none whatsoever if that is clear evidence that it hasn't worked the u.s. senate in fact investigated the senate inquiry investigated the program of what was called enhanced interrogations and cia black sites and what they found was that there was no actionable intelligence from the policy it what torture does is really stains the country's human rights record in a manner that is very difficult to comprehend and when it is the u.s. doing that it sets a horrendous precedent for the rest of the world that will be tolerated and what is really very shocking is here we are nearly 29000 years old going into the 20 year with no accountability whatsoever for that program of torture instigated by the u.s. . at a moral level can incoming president joe biden who's made from the same political party as barack obama if you will can he go further than just closing

guantanamo can he wipe the slate clean or is that utterly impossible. it is utterly impossible that said i think that there are a number of things that biden can do that will go that will speak to what simon was talking about about the complete lack of accountability for the torture program at the moment right that lack of accountability has led to a number of people involved in the torture program being promoted given a platform to issue just sort of this information about the torture program to the point where in here we are in 2021 talking about a program that is that existed largely between 20022007 wondering whether or not the torture technique was smart and of course they did they didn't and we know that we have empirical we have not a parable but we have plenty of evidence to show that it didn't work the senate report is 11 repository of evidence and so you know what he can do is

educate people he can educate people with regards to guantanamo on the number of mistakes that were made in bringing mention on time out there the 1st place the bounties that we paid for some of those men the misinformation that led to some of those being there but with far as to the cia program and the use of torture both in the cia program and dick went on and on no biden can go a long way toward saying look like yes we just had a cia director who was involved in the torture program and i know everyone talks about all of occasions but that doesn't mean that that is in any way validate what happened under this torture program you know the real effect of what happened ok just let me just let me know you can with those 2 points you've raised there i'll cut back to karen greenberg in new york count on that idea of the cia and educating people clearly the chain of accountability is broken was broken i remember gina

hospital to tune about years ago when she was at her cia hearing and she said and i remember the quote very distinctly she said something law. like i have a strong moral compass and she was using her morality to defend the situation that all 3 of you i guess would say is completely immoral and was immoral from the decision making process up to and including where we are today so how do you react to kate those people in the cia those people that say yes extraordinary decision is fine let's charter a plane and let's fly somebody from going ton m o 2 a black location someplace in the world that doesn't officially exist yet to at this point the lack of accountability was horrendous in the past and i would say more than educate people there's still a chance to hold people accountable and you probably saw this morning that president elect biden has said he's going to nominate william burns a one time state department diplomat to head the cia which is

a signal that nobody who is a part of this from the cia and cia here is in the torture program wasn't a that was going to run cia it's an important message but it's not enough so you know that's that's a beginning simon is quarantined and it's continued existence turmeric of an awful lot that's wrong with that mindset that karen is trying to break down there in as much as when pompei around the cia and mcmaster became trump's national security advisor both of them signaled very clearly it is wrong in principle to have gone ton a moat and it's wrong in practice to have one time of those guys you know they are not bleeding heart liberals that those 2 do not pick up the guardian and agree with everything they see in the editorial page of the guardian or the wall street journal i suggest that they would never do that ever anyway and they were signaling

to mr trump mr trump in 20000 said no we've got it we keep it we may carry on using it you know i don't think it matters where you are a liberal or conservative to put your. just plain wrong and so is indefinite detention and what we see in guantanamo is it's people who've been subject to enforce this appearance that means that they think picked up without any due process they've been dissipated for years in many instances their existence of course is now acknowledged and we know where they are as did their family but many have not had access to adequate access to a lawyer and so yeah i would stress that this cannot be a republican liberal conservative democrat issue this is an issue of of human decency and human dignity and human rights can i also just pick up one of the points that's already been made of the 2 yes there needs to be accountability and they need to be reeducation i completely agree with all that's just been said on both those points but as an additional step that's really very important and that is that the u.s. ratifies the international human rights treaties that would mean that this can

never ever happen again what the u.s. tried to do in the case of content of my is create a system outside of international human rights go try to push aside human rights through the geneva conventions international human rights treaties and to perpetrate the horrendous crimes that we have discussed in 4th disappearance and torture. what needs to happen is a more robust legal framework within the us signing on to the treaties created already by the international community to make sure that that never can happen ever again and that is something biting could achieve and i think would leave a really very significant long term legacy to his administration and finally. on the point that you raise can the state ever be wiped clean i completely agree the answer is no the report that amnesty launches today is called right or wrong though because we think that there are steps that can be taken to at least go some

way into improving the situation and mitigating this disaster has been called telhami day you were nodding your head in agreement the one point to you though is the existence of guantanamo bay and what america does with it now almost part of like up an existential crisis that's going on in america that's been kind of fuel and brought together or brought into focus by the outgoing president trump because there are aspects to america racism inequality that predate him but will still be there once he's gone the proud boys aren't really really going away and that's something that america has to get to grips with as a broader concept because you know there are lots of people that say guantanamo bay starts with and ends with racism because america just doesn't like brown people. yes and i'm one of those people who says that on a constant basis a lot of obey would not exist if we were talking about white men from france or germany it's because they are brown men that we as

a country decided that it was ok to hold them outside of us law outside of what we consider to be us territory simply for the justice department purposes and not apply our regular loss to them and establishing new tribunals for that which is illegal under international law and you know i like i think that if you look at guantanamo bay our comfort our grotesque comfort with holding these men indefinitely beasts you know to many americans nameless faceless men. in a camp is what led us to being relatively comfortable after 4 years now of living with brown children and women and children and families on the border i mean i think that you can draw a direct line from one to the other the lack of accountability for kuantan of all and the torture there and the cia torture has led to greater and greater crimes by government officials who now know that they can get away with with almost anything

i mean i think you know what happened what started a kuantan a moment started with the sort of initial steps taken off on the so-called war on terror that violated international law has turned into a sort of national security so called national security frankenstein monster ok karen if joe biden says maybe day one day 2 in the oval office if he says fine we're closing it in 2 years' time but if closing it just means sending people to other locations that's a conjuring trick that's a presidential conjuring trick what's the point yeah well just to start with it would be ok to do whatever reason you can find to get people out of one time tomorrow is is terrific but to your question absolutely it needs to be closed down it needs to be done with a lot of declarations. about what this means and how wrong it was i want to just tag on to something else has said it's actually very important it wasn't just what happened at one time it was what we fear from the beginning that it wasn't just in

violation of international humanitarian law it was about more human rights it was about what could happen to the rule of law in the united states and elsewhere because once you compromise and corrupted the standards because of torture and other you know other operations you could do it anywhere and if led to the end to the courts it's ok karen thank you for that simon last word or 2 to you but you commissioned the report barack obama february 26th when he was talking about trying to close it said this is about closing a chapter in american history that chapter is clearly still being dictated by somebody it's still being written by somebody and if it's not closed just going ton i'm a bay therefore carry on serving as a recruiting tool for the kind of people who want to do bad things to america.

we simply don't know and there's a myriad of reasons why people join in armed groups but what we can say for sure is that it will continue to be a stain on international human rights through a stain on the us its human rights record while it remains open it really needs to be closed as a matter of absolute certainty and it is a clear thought in the sight of any kind of us that in a city when it prepares professes to tell other countries about very human rights records ok we must leave it there thank you all so much for joining us here on inside story thank you to our guests they were proud and simon crowther and karen greenberg and thank you too for your company can see the program again any time via our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter and on this planet a.j. the inside story when we should all be on the entire team here in doha thanks for watching we will see you tomorrow at the usual times until then.

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is alike and it's my job to shed light on how and why. this is al-jazeera. hello there i'm having more here dean and this is the al-jazeera news our coming to you live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes u.s. democrats introduce an article of impeachment against president trump charging him with incitements of insurrection relating to the attack on capitol hill. they've also submitted a resolution calling on vice president mike pence to remove trump from office. defying humanitary.